MARIETTA — Cobb School Board members are set to vote on personnel changes that could soon sweep least 11 people into new and existing Cobb School District posts at their next meeting on Wednesday.

The board will decide whether to approve a $490,000 budget adjustment to allow the district to hire five additional staff members to support the implementation of a new teacher evaluation system, said Jay Dillon, district spokesman.

The board will also vote on whether to appoint new principals to five schools, as well as select a new director of student discipline.

Dillon said the new system, known as the Cobb Keys for Teacher and Leader Effectiveness, will go into effect during the upcoming school year.

“Preparing the district for this shift is a massive undertaking that involves extensive training and the development of many resources,” he said.

Among other items, Dillon said the school board will discuss House Bill 60, the state gun law that went into effect July 1.

Gov. Nathan Deal signed the Safe Carry Protection Act in late April. The measure allows licensed gun holders to carry their firearms into bars, government buildings, places of worship and school board meetings.

Dillon said the board will discuss the impact, if any, the new law will have on schools at Wednesday’s work session.

New teacher evaluation a ‘labor-intensive process’

John Adams, the district’s chief human resources officer, said the new evaluation reportedly takes three times longer to complete than the current system.

Passed by the state in 2013, the evaluation debuted in several districts across Georgia as part of pilot programs before its mandatory state-wide implementation began ahead of the 2014-15 school year, Adams said.

“It’s a more labor-intensive process,” said Grant Rivera, the district’s chief leadership and learning officer.

Rivera said he experienced the new teacher evaluation system — called TKES for short — first-hand during the two years he spent as a principal in Fulton County.

He highlighted the elevated role of student surveys in TKES, noting the “more comprehensive” assessments require hundreds of students in third-grade and higher to receive online usernames and passwords and answer questions about their teachers’ performances through a Web portal twice a year.

Half of the state-mandated evaluation is based on student growth as measured by standardized tests, Adams said, when such results are available.

When they aren’t, as is the case with music, art and physical education classes, teachers and administrators in each district must come up with their own set of “student learning objectives” to gauge student progress.

Adams said the school board has already committed about $1 million just to develop those objectives.

In total, Adams said the state has given Cobb $18,000 to fund the entirety of the transition to TKES.

“They’re not thrilled with the idea of another unfunded mandate, but they understand we have to do this right,” Adams said of the school board members he hopes will vote to approve spending $490,000 on five new staff members to support TKES.

Dillon said one of Adams’ first tasks as the new head of human resources for Cobb schools was to determine the county’s standing in the TKES implementation process.

Adams said he felt like Captain Brody in the movie “Jaws” when he and his team began digging through the list of requirements TKES would place on existing staff.

“We realized we were going to need a bigger boat,” he joked.

Adams said his team called around to other districts to see how they were handling the implementation.

Paulding County, which he said was a third the size of the Cobb school system, added 33 new positions to the general fund payroll, hiring three support staff for the central office and 30 spread among the schools who are dedicated to monitoring the evaluation process.

“They basically created a new quasi-administrative position at each school,” Adams said.

“We’d love to be able to do that in Cobb, but the money is just not there.”

He said Gwinnett County — which has 145,000 students to Cobb’s 110,000 — added 10 to its central office staff to oversee TKES and even purchased its own version of the state Web portal all schools will use.

Even Marietta City Schools, which Adams said is just one-ninth of the size of Cobb schools, hired a full-time staff member to oversee TKES.

If the board approves the budget adjustment at Wednesday’s meeting, Adams said his team will likely bring forward a list of names to fill the five new slots at the board’s July 31 meeting.

He said he hopes the new staff could be hired at the beginning of August.

Five principal appointments on the way

Gail Johnson, principal at Campbell Middle School in Smyrna, created a vacancy when she accepted a position in another school system, Dillon said.

Kristy Mason, principal at Kemp Elementary School in Powder Springs, and Mike Bivens, principal at Lindley Middle School in Mableton, are both retiring, he added, leaving their spots to be filled by the board at Wednesday’s meeting.

Cheatham Hill Elementary School in Marietta and Garrett Hill Elementary School in Austell could also welcome new principals after the board addresses the five principal appointments it has on its dockets.

Just wait to see how many more teachers and principals leave within 6 months of seeing what a fake Grant Rivera is. What till they see he is just a bully. Check out how they despised him at Westlake, and what happened with the best teachers at Canpbell , the best Math teachers, the head of IB, etc....

Talk about the hypo racy of the south Cobb football coach, Rivera was non-renewed by Dale Gaddis.

I found out people either like Rivera or hate him. I for one can tell you his replacement at Campbell has been horrible. So many more teachers have left and as well as a good football coach who she fired mainly because of race.

Poetic Justice would be if Dale Gaddis got "non renewed" by Rivera.

two cents

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July 16, 2014

Cobb added more than 300 teachers to reduce class sizes district-wide. How many of these are classroom teachers with face time with students for the entire instructional day? How many are support teachers who have their classes canceled often in order to perform administrative duties, paperwork, and testing? Are "administrators" being categorized as "teachers" for reporting purposes? It would be interesting to see the definitions and numbers for teachers, support teachers, and administrators by school.

The "new" educator evaluations STILL have nothing to do with job security nor pay. It is still a system of pay for degrees and longivity - what a waste of time and energy - Where is the incentive for performance ?

Tes Socrates, I'm not sure where you get your information, but in Cobb, you need three years of good evaluations to be offered due process protection. With the new evaluations, your pay step is frozen for poor evaluations, and you could ultimately be fired or have your certificate no renewed. While it's not merit pay, it's certainly an incentive for professionals who take their careers seriously.

Many teachers and administrators are leaving the education arena and retiring early or quitting altogether. We have lost over half of our staff in the last 5 years. These are not the dead wood, but the point on teachers that no one wants to lose. The work continues to pile on, the hours are never ending, the pay is down, and parents do not support teachers anymore. The low income and Hispanic population will kill teacher evaluations because 50% of your evaluation is dependent on their test scores. Their parents don't monitor homework, don't make them come to school, and just can't help them at home. In addition, give kids a tool to bash you if they don't like you, that just adds to it. Education simply gets worse as the years pass. We need more teachers, but now the district is taking $490,000 for new staff devoted to evaluations. Bad situation all the way around.

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